Footy Design Trends

(as printed in "MODEL YACHTING", Summer 2008, No. 152)

by Niel Goodrich

Brujo placed diagonally and on an angle
in the measurement box. Photo by Ruby Levesque.

The Footy Class is new territory. It
was conceived as a builder's class.
Small boats governed by simple
rules that would encourage newcomers and
old hands, young and the young at heart, male
and female to get involved with building model
yachts. Footys don't seem daunting to the
passerby; they are often called cute, but don't
be fooled by their inviting appearance. There
has been an awful lot of serious effort and ingenuity
bubbling in the background.

As evidenced by the dozen boats in the
photo spread following this article, representing
designers from five countries, there is no
archetype for this class as yet. Many of these
designers have different observations of Footy
performance characteristics and rationales for
their design approaches. The designers generously
provided the photographs and basic statistical
information that accompanies them,
so that others could derive starting points for
their own Footy projects.

As an international class all measurements
are metric, so for those who can't visualize
metric measurements, some math may be
required. To convert millimeters to inches multiply
the metric number by 0.0394. To convert
a decimal fraction of an inch to 32nds, multiply
the fraction by 32. To convert gram weights
to ounces divide the grams by 28.35.

Generally speaking, the Footys being
developed in the UK and the commonwealth
countries are pushing the minimum weights
to lower totals. Many of these weights result
from using lightweight electronics and
Lithium batteries, combined with ultra-light
building techniques, lower volume hulls, and
McCormack rigs. It remains to be seen if these
boats can stand up to the wear and tear of
fleet racing. Here in the US, the Footy
fleet average is a little over a pound in
all-up weight. So far, most US builders
are leaning toward a more conservatively
built boat. Several of the boats represented
in the photo spread are commercially
available, and these too tend to be
on the heavier end of the spectrum.

Construction methods run the
gamut from hard-chine hulls made from
foam and balsa panels to molded ones in
composites or fiberglass. The focus of
some designers is on ease of building,
while others make intricate molds for
every component. But building light is
the universal imperative because every
gram shaved from the hull will benefit
either the displacement-to-ballast ratio or the
overall weight.

Most of the designers represented here
use fore-and-aft placement in the box. The box
features slots in the front (for a bowsprit) and
the back (for a stern mounted rudder) that encourage
this sort of placement. The weight of
a Footy displacing the equivalent volume of
water over a 12-inch waterline length accounts
for the stout appearance of many of the boats.
Three of the designers have used unconven-
tional placement in the box to gain waterline
length and smooth out the hull shape. But tak-
ing advantage of the box's interior dimensions
this way comes with its own tradeoffs.

Blue Sky, is a lightweight, low-volume
design, which fits in the box on an angle longi-
tudinally. This placement gains more waterline
length but at a cost of moving the center of
effort of her sails farther aloft. Blue Sky's
mainsail looks a lot like one on a beach cat,
with a cutout along the foot that allows it to
clear the top of the box. Angled placement
in the box also restricts potential keel
depth. A higher center of effort and
reduced righting moment of the keel
should make for a tender boat, a trade-off
for increased waterline length,
more streamlined shape, and more potential speed.

Moonshadow is placed diagonally
in the box (more or less from corner
to corner). This also gains waterline
length but requires a narrow hull to
fit properly. Moonshadow does not have
to carry an unusually shaped rig and
doesn't sacrifice keel depth. She is also
the lightest boat represented, in both
hull and overall weight figures.

Brujo combines these concepts, using
both angled and diagonal placement. The
raised deck/cutwater brings the rig up to the
top edge of the box so that the rig swings clear.
Brujo will gain waterline length but sacrifice
keel depth and a low center of effort. Brujo is a
high volume boat with her displacement about
average.

Obviously there are many creative ways
of fitting a boat into the measurement box. Of
course, by the time this issue is in your hands,
much of this information will be old news,
and the Footy class, propelled by the energies
of many innovative people, will have taken off
in new directions. This vitality fuels the rapid
growth of this new and exciting class.

I would like to acknowledge the people
who helped make this presentation happen.
Herman Estevez worked with the photographs
and layout, and Ruby Levesque typeset the
layout. Thank you both. And, of course, my
thanks go out to the designers who participated
in this article for their generous gift of
information.

The deadline for this article found the
Bantam 2 and Brujo still under construction,
and still missing bulbs (they are closer to
completion but not quite there yet). I build
Footys using this method to determine how
much keel depth a boat can potentially have
and then subtract the bulb dimension (which is
dependent on the weight of the hull and rig all
up) from that depth. These photos were only
to illustrate different placements in the box.
Eventually the hulls with appendages and bulb
attached will have to fit within the confines of
the measurement box.